Tuesday, August 09, 2016

US-99 Rebranding

Ray Stevens is gone. Lisa Dent is gone. Night jock Jax is gone. And now, so is the slogan and the approach.

They are now known as "US 99 Chicago’s Hottest Country" and they're going for the younger audience. The program director told Robert Feder that “everything must pass the filter of what’s hot.”

This is, of course, a reaction to the ratings success of their competitor Big 95.5, which has been nipping at their heels. I'm not a country fan (although it is growing on me), and I'm not in the demo, but I've seen moves like this before and they rarely work out. It smells of desperation.